Bought a house over the winter that came with a 12 year old, 38x18, above ground, 20,000 gallon pool. Wasn’t looking to be a pool owner, but here I am. Thought I would build a good relationship with the local pool service store to “hold my hand” and educate me. So I hired them to open the pool and give me an orientation.

Well… let’s just say that experience did not go well on many levels. And then I found this site. WOW!! THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!! I’ve learned so much from everyone here I feel I could open my own pool company and put that other one out of business. ;-) I also learned that the other company ripped me off more than I originally realized. Oh well, at least I’m on the enlightened pool owner path now.

The day after the pool was opened and the service crew dumped in unknown amounts of various Bioguard products, I took a water sample to the store for testing. PH was >8.4, FC 0, CYA 60, ALK 105, hardness 117. All those numbers were circled on the test printout and discussed, *except* CYA. And I was sold a package of test strips that did not have a test for CYA, as well as more (way overpriced) BioGuard products.

Needless to say, after spending hours perusing the great info here on the site, I quickly abandoned everything the pool company told me to do. For the past two weeks I have been using nothing but the BBB method. My chlorine of choice is a 12.5% liquid bleach from BJs specifically marketed for use in pools by a company called Austin’s, under the Pool Tech brand. I’ve been adding 64 oz of bleach every evening to achieve a FC level of 5. Other numbers at the moment are PH 7.8, ALK 120, hardness 50 - all measured using those strips - and the water is crystal clear. As soon as my “proper” test kit arrives from Amazon, the CYA test is the first thing on my to do list.

The only real question I have not resolved in my head is how often should the pool be shocked, and how much bleach to add to get to what level of FC. I've looked at the Best Guess chart, but without knowing for sure the CYA levels, I'm *really* just guessing here. Any guidance from the experts would be great. Again, thank you to all that make this site possible!!